1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of content tagging in a computer communications network and more particularly to deep tagging of media content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Xanadu, the progenitor of the World Wide Web and the Internet intended upon a means for providing self-service distribution of content to interested parties across the globe. The World Wide Web (Web) as the successor to Xanadu, through its adoption of a standardized markup language and corresponding content browser specification, advanced the notion of content distribution to its present high efficient form. So effective was the Web in bringing content to the masses that an unwieldy volume of content rapidly published through the Web far ahead of any mechanism to locate and index desired content. The search engine eventually filled this void resulting in an effective way for users to seek out and view massive quantities of content on demand.
Content indexing associated with search engine technology relies upon an automated classification of content irrespective of the subjective perspective of the Web community. Second generation technologies address the socialization of content distribution about the Internet by personalizing the characterization and indexing of content. Indeed second generation technologies provide a wholly different way of indexing and locating content dependent upon the social relationships between end users. Exemplary second generation technologies include social networking portals, co-browsing environments, and social bookmarking systems.
Social bookmarking refers to the collective location and characterization of content of interest. In a social bookmarking system, different users can tag content of interest and the tags applied by the members of a social bookmarking community can be applied to content as it is distributed to other members. Indeed even the presentation of content that has been tagged can vary according to the volume of tags applied to the content by the members of the social bookmarking community. In all instances, however, a member of the social community must locate content of interest and apply a tag to the content of interest such that subsequent members viewing the content of interest can enjoy the context provided by the tag.
The notion of tagging initially had been associated with traditional Web content—namely Web pages. Tagging, however, has expanded its reach to include fully motion video and audio and other types of Web distributable content. In audio and video, specifically, deep tags can be applied to portions of media content such as audio or video so that an end user can skip to the deeply tagged portions during playback. Thus, deep tagging has become an organizational tool for Web distributable media content. Additionally, deep tagging provides socially acceptable context for members of a social network providing the deep tags. Still, applying deep tags to media content can be challenging as end users tediously must recall a desired portion of media content and navigate to that portion during playback in order to apply a deep tag.